A year ago Barnes & Noble closed the book on its Nook line of tablets, opting to lend the brand out to other manufacturers instead. Now we're seeing the first Android device to capitalize on this idea. Take a guess as to which company decided, sure, I'll make a Nook tablet. That's right, none other than Samsung. When you're already flooding the market with umpteen different tablet variants, what's one more? Dear reader, I present to you the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook.

Dear Barnes & Noble: bless you, ladies and gentlemen, for making the Nook Color. Without it, the Android modding scene might be less vibrant than it is now. On that note, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight (a Kindle-style e-ink reader, also running Android) has received another price drop. Now you can pick one up for a cool $99 - not bad for a device that launched at the already-low price of $139.

Barnes & Noble announced last week that its Nook Simple Touch e-book readers were coming to the UK, and it's now been confirmed that John Lewis will stock the devices from mid-October.

Although Barnes & Noble is an established name in the US, this will be the first time that the company has made itself known on this side of the pond. With no brand recognition, it will have a tough time competing against the likes of Amazon, who just recently partnered with Waterstones to bring the Kindle to the high street.

eReaders have long been plagued with the problem of being damn near useless in low-light scenarios, but thanks to the recently announced NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight, those days are finally past us. Using a front-lit (as opposed to backlit, which doesn't really work with eInk) display, the new Simple Touch eReader allows you to enjoy the pleasure of eInk reading without having to worry about adequate ambient lighting.

This should be especially good news for those who enjoy reading in bed or during long flights.

Anyone that has ever spent any length of time with an e-ink based e-reader like the Kindle or Nook can attest to their uselessness in dark spaces. Now it looks like Barnes and Noble is going to be taking a crack at fixing that shortcoming of e-readers in an effort to gain some traction in its battle against Amazon. Leaked signage points to an updated Nook Simple Touch with a front-lit screen, and it might be here sooner than you think.

Leave it to the New York Times to stuff a zinger like this in a three-page piece on the future of the publishing industry; it looks like Barnes & Noble is set to announce a new Nook device come this Spring. This will be B&N's fifth Nook device, following the Nook Tablet.

From the New York Times:

Barnes & Noble is trying to strike at Amazon with another device. At its labs in Silicon Valley last week, engineers were putting final touches on their fifth e-reading device, a product that executives said would be released sometime this spring.

Barnes & Noble announced today that it is considering selling its NOOK business, citing significant shortfalls in sales and cutting its full-year forecast.

B&N also cited NOOK sales which fell below expectations, and investments in advertising and expansion as reasons for a predicted shortfall in fiscal 2012 sales of between $200 million and $320 million less than average estimates of $7.32 billion.

The major bookseller indicated that it plans to market the NOOK for "years to come," but that it "over-anticipated the growth in consumer demand for single-purpose black-and-white reading devices this holiday," as the company's simplest e-reader lagged far behind in sales compared to other members of the NOOK family.

It seems Barnes and Noble gave everyone a bit of a surprise today. It was expected that the bookseller would be launching a 3G version of its wildly popular NOOK e-reader (or maybe even a 3G NOOKcolor), but instead, B&N went straight for the competition's throat, launching the 6-inch e-ink display sporting, Android-powered (albeit Android 2.1) NOOK Simple Touch Reader. And all for the low, low cost of $140 - a price suspiciously reminiscent of a certain other e-book reader.

Building on the strength of the growing e-Reader market, bookstore giant Barnes & Noble has just formally unveiled its latest device: the NOOKcolor. Rumoured for some time now, but never offering much in the way of solid details, the covers are now off this full-color touchscreen device.

Hard internal specs are still few and far between, but in the case of an e-Reader one thing matters most: the screen. Thankfully B&N has seen fit to equip the NOOKcolor with a high resolution 1024x600 7" IPS display.

Barnes & Noble has announced a new, Wi-Fi only, version of the Nook today, offering a lower introductory price point next to the more expensive 3G model.

Available to buy from today, the new Wi-Fi model is available for just $149, over $100 cheaper than the original price of the 3G model. For that price, you’re still getting what’s essentially the same Nook as before, just without the 3G internet connection.